


remember us

by thehandsingsweapon



Series: in a future time; [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:11:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: After failing to publish his final collection of poems for his master's degree, Yuuri Katsuki retreats to Minako Okukawa’s summer house on the Thessaly coast. One bright afternoon, a diver emerges from the Aegean sea: hair the color of moonlight, eyes the color of the tides. He’s an archaeologist, Yuuri learns. Not just any archaeologist. He is Victor Nikiforov, whose first book, Beloved, is one of Yuuri's favorite pieces of non-fiction literature. Yuuri’s spent his whole life enraptured by ancient myths, has wandered countless museums to look into the time-washed, smooth faces of Apollo, of Persephone. Only now does he understand why the Oracles gave such dire warnings to the family of Psyche; why they ever insisted Cupid was the one god all other gods feared. Victor unlocks something that saturates his work; makes Yuuri understand why Sappho ever wrote 'let me tell you this: someone in some future time will remember us.'Additional artifacts: additional poems, written by Yuuri, during and after the invincible Grecian summer.





	remember us

 

****

**Orpheus and Eurydice**

perhaps the moral of the story is this:  
never trust a boy with a lyre.  
  
sweet girl,  
you must save yourself.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

****

**Daphne and Apollo**

_love conquers all,_  
we so often say,  
without ever considering  
the origin of the phrase.

it was with Apollo  
that Eros taught  
the gods to fear.

sun-god, athlete  
musician, poet, prophet:  
the masculine ideal,  
by any account

and such wishful thinking,  
to dream that the man  
who shoots you with his bow  
might also with his lyre  
sing you to the halls of healing

perhaps even Daphne  
might have loved him  
had Eros not also commanded  
the power of hate.

Ovid says she fled him  
the way hares flee wolves  
and is fleeing him still;

Apollo, for his part, made her ever-green  
and took her branches for his crown,  
and found little better fortune  
in his next love affairs

which must have given Eros  
tremendous satisfaction at the games:  
this tangible reminder  
of his permanent victory.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

**Terpsichore  
**   
_(for M.,)_  
  
she was once a ballerina  
one of the greats, actually,  
a  _prima ballerina,_

and a friend of my mother  
who taught me to dance.

(at the time I did not understand  
that divine legacy)

“you cannot write a book of poetry  
without a dedication to the muses,”

says my lover, who is very astute

but who does not understand the way  
a poem comes together  
who does not know the task  
of taking bones  
and giving them wings

it is not unlike dancing,  
i think: you ask the words to leap,  
and sometimes they do

sometimes they twirl on the pages  
the way she once taught me:

step, step, bend, reach, jump

fly, even

i suppose my first lessons  
in all the best words  
might also have been hers.

it is worth mentioning  
that greedy men always attempt  
to collect a woman so singular  
and never know what to do with her:

Terpsichore made sirens  
beautiful children who feast on hearts  
and sing dangerous songs of the sea  
seducers, these creatures of hers,  
the sort that lean in close and whisper:

“don’t ever take your eyes off me.”

 

 

\- - -

 

 

**Pandora**

she is all of us,  
holding the box  
  
but each of us  
must discover for ourselves  
the one small thing  
at the bottom.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

**Atalanta**

she is wild as Artemis, who she loves, is wild:  
all unkempt hair and ragged fingernails.  
sometimes she smells of pine  
and sometimes of smoke

they say she is not easy to love.  
they talk about her bull-headedness,  
her bear-strength, her leonine grace.  
she does not know how to dress, they say,  
and always there are the jokes  
about who it is who will wear the pants.

in the stories, to love her is to court misfortune:  
men die in her hunt, and in the races,  
or they are consumed by fire.  
only one is swept into a marriage,  
won only by his treachery. 

to Atalanta i say this:

my unsweet sister, keep running:  
  
be untethered,  
stay wild.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

****

**Andromeda**  
  
always in these stories i wonder  
did the damsel and her monster ever speak?  
  
Andromeda they chained to a rock  
because her mother said she was beautiful –   
  
– the most beautiful, even, which is very like a mother  
for instance: my mother even says that i am talented.  
  
the monster’s name was Cetus,  
but we will call him anxiety,  
and he was sent by Poseidon,  
who we will call the fluid of the synapses,   
or, if you like: the brain.  
  
let us not pretend you’ve killed him, Perseus  
the sea has many fish, many mouths,  
and in these stories there always comes another monster.  
  
but who was she, without the rock,   
the monster, the rescue,  
  
the wedding?  
  
and who was i, before you walked into my life,  
and showed me how to fight demons?

 


End file.
